14 DAY TRIAL // Google Hotpot is growing at a fast pace, indicating that the company is very focused on the location space. The place recommendations service is now getting a big promotion as Hotpot reviews from your friends will be incorporated in the search results. Hotpot is also going global with translations in 38 languages.
"You can now enjoy Hotpot recommendations in your regular search results on Google.com. So say you’re looking for a restaurant in Barcelona. Go to Google and search [restaurant barcelona]," Lior Ron, Product Manager at Google, announced.
"If a friend has rated a particular restaurant, you might see their rating and what they had to say about it—as well as their name and photo—directly beneath that restaurant’s listing," he explained.
The place results will still be sorted by their relevance, but, if there is a review from one of your friends then it could prove a lot more useful and interesting to you than what the Google algorithms come up with.
If you want to go further and see only the recommendations from your friends, you can select the Places filter from the left sidebar and then select "Just friends."
All of this depends on using Hotpot in the first place and on having connected with several friends. More friends will mean more recommendations, of course, too many and the relevance of the results diminishes.
Note that you need to be logged into your Google account as well, otherwise Google won't know who your friends are.
Very recently, Hotpot was also integrated into Google Maps enabling users to keep up with what their friends are up to even if they're not visiting Hotpot.
"Starting today, we’re making Hotpot available in 38 new languages — including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Korean, Polish, Russian and Spanish — allowing people to share their favorite places in their native language," Ron added.